Category Archives: Resources

The Council for Community and Economic Research has launched the newest iteration of the State Business Incentives Database website. New features make finding up-to-date information on state incentive programs even easier for economic developers, business development finance professionals, economic researchers, and other users. Continue reading →

A recently released report from the Brookings Institute highlights the most promising ways they believe cities, states, and regions can move forward in attracting businesses and creating jobs in a responsible and fair way. The study also confirms analysis done by C2ER of the State Business Incentives Database. Continue reading →

This is a guest blog post by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). For comments or questions, please e-mail Weston Merrick, Economic Analyst at DEED.

In the past few months, the EPA’s proposed rules change and the U.N. Climate Change summit have brought renewed focus to the nation’s energy mix. These conversations generally center on the high economic cost of abandoning fossil fuels, but what goes unsaid is the massive energy void clean sources will likely fill.

Clean Energy offers states abundant, reliable, and increasingly cost effective sources of energy. For states without fossil fuels, it allows them to replace energy imports with local production. Moreover, this local production tends to create stable, high-paying jobs. Some states and regions have begun to grasp this latent opportunity and are working to identify and cultivate clean energy employment and industry clusters. Continue reading →

C2ER has just finished its latest update of the State Business Incentives Database. This makes the State Business Incentives Database even more valuable to users who need the most up-to-date information on state programs.

An old shoe factory in St. Paul is transformed into an LEED-certified affordable housing structure. Across the river in Minneapolis a disused library building becomes a neighborhood career and technology center. These are just two of the projects benefiting from the Minnesota Historic Structure Rehabilitation State Tax Credit. Continue reading →

The Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) recently updated its State Economic Development Program Expenditures Database as part of a continuous effort to track investments in economic development across all fifty states. The database now includes all Governor Recommended Budgets for fiscal year 2015.

Coming up in a few weeks, C2ER will be a presenting a new training course, Cluster Mapping for Economic Development. This is a one-day training course delivered by the U.S. Cluster Mapping Project at Harvard Business School. This in-person training session will introduce attendees to important cluster concepts, and how the U.S. Cluster Mapping Project’s newly revamped webtool can help to inform economic development strategies and activities.

To learn more about the class, you can watch this short video with Sarah Jane Maxted from the U.S. Cluster Mapping Project. Sarah Jane talks about the tool itself and what skills attendees can expect to take away from the training.

The first class takes place in Boston on June 25, then is presented a second time in Sacramento on July 29, paired with a second day of learning on July 30, The Basics of Economic Impact Analysis.

On first guess, it might be easy to assume that the biggest movie-producing state in America would be California or New York – states well-known for being full of stars and movie sets. Interestingly, this isn’t the case. Louisiana accounted for 18 of the 108 films produced by major studios last year, more than California, Georgia, and New York, the next most-filmed-in state. Continue reading →

While many state economic development programs aim to provide incentives to businesses from any industry, a large proportion of state programs target their incentives at specific industries. Continue reading →

CREC Research Fellow Ellen Harpel (of Smart Incentives and Business Development Advisors LLC) recently gave an informative webinar on evaluating incentives programs where she gave an overview of types of incentives programs, frameworks for evaluation, and trends in incentives transparency and accountability. Continue reading →